Come On Up For The Rising, Come On Up Put Your Hand In Mine
by TaylorLeighBird
Summary: During the Battle of New York that Avengers were not the only heroes who were there that great and terrible day. "Hard times don't create heroes. It is during the hard times when the 'hero' within us is revealed."-Bob Riley
1. Chapter 1

Ava Jones does not consider herself something special. She is not a genius and she was not born into money. She is just an orphan taken in after her parents were killed and she was then taken in and raised by a collective group of people who still hold a special place in her heart. The fact that she is a mutant and this place was the institute means nothing to her.

She never uses her powers if she can help it and instead concentrates on keeping her grades up at Columbia and graduating with her Bachelor's degree in English and after graduation she is headed back to the Institute where she will be helping with whatever they need her to do.

But it is just her luck to be caught in the shitstorm that is the Battle of New York and the alien invasion that changes her world forever. The mutant "problem" had not been in the news for years ever since the awful cover up over what happened in San Francisco and the cure and everything else that comes with it. But Ava knows this will bring everything back to the forefront.

For the reason alone she wants to run and get to Westchester and leave this city and everything and everyone within it. But as the chaos descends around her and she spots a child about to be crushed by a falling piece of concrete Ava feels the part of her head that is her conscience that sounds too much like the Professor lecturing her about leaving an innocent child to die. And in that instant Ava acts because she knows she could not let an innocent fall no matter what the cost, even if the cost is revealing she is a mutie. Of course this means she will have to run and that is just a whole other can of worms she would rather not open.

But if there is one thing Ava Jones has never had a problem doing it is surviving and this is just another problem she will have to deal with before her time is done. So she moves and just as the concrete is about to fall onto the child she lifts her acts and the block meets her fist and cracks into pieces around them like dust.

She looks to see if the child is injured and instead sees what must be the mother looking at her with awe and what Ava wants to think is not fear but thankfulness. Ava simply nods at the woman and then feels an anger come alive within her.

This is her home. And suddenly surviving is not enough anymore. She knows what she has to do. And so she does it. She chooses to fight. And she knows there will be a price to pay later after all of this is over. But she knows that helping others is what the Professor would want her to do if he was still alive.

So she unleashes her fury on everything around her as she takes off in the air flying and destroying whatever she can get her hands on. She lifts people buried and breaks bones and stops looters and generally takes out her frustration on her upcoming finals on anything that looks remotely inhumane. And if she sees some people doing strange things like levitating concrete blocks or setting things on fire she ignores it for the task at hand.

She fights because this is her home and because all it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing. She does not know if she is a good person but either way she will fight. This is her home. She will deal with the aftermath after the day is done.

Thirty-six hours after Loki is gone from Earth and he knows Coulson is finally stable and on his oath to recovery Nicholas Fury is looking at the files and images in front of him. It seems in the Battle of New York more than one powerful being stepped in to help. He sees a picture of a man electrocuting an alien and a woman with claws defending a child. But one certain picture catches his attention.

It is of a woman who looks barely legal with hair the color of marigolds and brown eyes filled with a grim determination as she saves a child from being crushed by a cinderblock. It is not her ability to make the block convert to dust or that she is untouched by the act that catches his attention.

No it is the look in her eyes that makes him smirk. It is the look of a survivor and it is a look he knows all too well. It is a look he knows is held in his own eyes and those of the Avengers. And he smirks once more as he tech tell him that all of the apparent mutants who helped in the Battle are safe as every picture of them not printed is disappearing off the internet at a rapid pace by something none of them have ever seen before.

Fury smirks. It is no matter. He has seen her face. And it looks like he may have found another recruit for his Initiative.


	2. Chapter 2

Andre Delgado is a former Marine who fought in the Gulf War and is the fifth generation of his family to fight in a conflict for his country. Sometimes he still has nightmares about the acts he himself both committed and saw done in the name of king and god and country by himself and everyone around him.

But still he knows that if he were a younger man he would answer the call once more to come to arms. That is just the kind of man he is. So when he wakes up one morning and goes to work at the bank like any normal day he is shocked when the sky opens and bug like aliens begin to invade the city he has called for the past twenty years. It has been over twenty years since the war and many years since he held a life in his hands at the end of his gun. But still the instinct is the same.

To protect and serve and to do something for the greater good. The greater good being everything he can to save everyone around him. So he tries to get everyone he can down into the subways out of the battle underground. And as he grows exhausted and tired he presses on because that is what his father taught him to do. Good men act. And he wants to be a good man so he acts to save everyone around him.

And when he sees an alien aim a weapon at a boy who still has so many more years to live and so much to give the world Andre does not hesitate. He acts and steps in front of the boy and takes a burst of energy right to the chest.

As the light fades and his eyes close Andre regrets nothing. He regrets nothing as the boy screams for help. Andre tries to smile and his last words coughed out with the blood dripping from his lips are simple and what was taught and passed down from his forefather. Good men act.

Andre Delgado will never know that the boy he saved will enter the service soon after he turns eighteen inspired by those words. He does not know after one tour in the army the boy will enter university and then law school determined to make the world a safer place. He dies not knowing that the boy will one day act as a DA and put dozens of dangerous men and women behind bars and getting justice for disposed and deceased.

Andre Delgado knows none of this. And yet he acted anyway.

Heroes are ordinary people who make themselves extraordinary.  
**Gerard Way**


End file.
